POEMS

        Being

        The eight year old knows.

        Eyes sparkling, laughing, luminous smile,

        she twirls like a dervish dancer

        on her new roller-blades            tries a jig

        when told dancing classes had been organized –

        falls splat on her behind.

        Being is such fun!

        When she was nine it was hula-hoops around the waist,

        at ten, building bonfires for cracker night,

        twelve, rules started to invade her space,

        still she dragged her young cousins through the drains

        that linked the duck ponds at Centennial park –  

        came home with slush-stains on her socks.

        Did her parents know?      She never told!

        Now arthritic twinges set the tone,

        she no longer jumps,

                    gathers grass burns as accolades,

             executes those triple somersaults

                               that exercised so well

                                        her free-wheeling frame,

        Today she’d break her bones.

        In her head,

             her arms slowly fan a universal arc,  

                    her neck stretches –

                                long         and she twirls

        like a coiled spinning-top,

                        and smiles

                                at her parent’s treasure,

                                         their gift to her.

        Once again she's eight, just eight,

                                                 just being –

        the taste of sea-salt in the mouth,

                salsa up the nose, the wiggle of toes

                            and those Christmas beetles

                                                that came

                        unbidden, like a cricket’s song,

                                                the night her mother died.

                                                                Oh!

            To be eight again skipping down York Rd.

                                                            ©Rosalie Fishman 2013 c